This document discusses various perspectives on media effects and moral panics related to media violence. It addresses theories that media can influence audiences, such as cultivation theory, but also perspectives that question the assumption that media automatically causes effects. It explores moral panics that have occurred over media content and violence, often involving children and youth. These panics are argued to reflect fears over uncontrolled children and popular entertainment of the masses. The document presents debates over claims of media effects and influences from scholars like Gauntlett, Buckingham, and others.

1. VIOLENCE
Media Effects and Moral Panic

2. Media Theories (cross-media)
Media theories studied during
the course might include:
Media analysis eg:
• • Semiotics
• • Structuralism and post-
structuralism
• • Postmodernism and its
critiques
Politics and the Media eg:
• • Gender and ethnicity
• • Marxism and hegemony
• • Liberal Pluralism
• • Colonialism and Post-
colonialism
Consumption and Production eg:
• • Audience theories
• • Genre theories
Media Issues and Debates
•Representation and stereotyping
• Media effects
• Reality TV
• News Values
• Moral Panics
• Post 9/11 and the media
• Ownership and control
• Regulation and censorship
• Media technology and the digital revolution
– changing technologies in the 21st century
• The effect of globalisation on the media

3. Does the Media
influence audiences?
 Media Effects theory (Hypodermic needle,
Cultivation and Two-Step) assumes that
Audiences are affected by Media texts.
 List as many ways that you think we can be
influenced by the Media.

4. CLASSIC STATEMENT on EFFECTS
• From the Newson Report:
‘The principle that what is experienced...will
have some effect on some people is an
established one, and is the reason why the
industry finds it worthwhile to spend millions
of pounds on advertising’.

5. • ‘The principle that what is experienced...will have
some effect on some people is an established one,
and is the reason why industry finds it worthwhile to
spend millions of pounds on advertising’.
• What are some of the problems with this
statement?

6. • The link between the action (the effect) and
the media (the cause) has never been clearly
established
• The some people referred to may be
influenced by other things to a greater extent.
• The type of effect has not been clearly
established.

7. NEWSON Report 1994
• Partly a response to murder of toddler James
Bulger in 1993 by two 10yr old boys.
• Led to a change in the BBFC rules and
regulations

8. GAUNTLETT 1995
• One of the most problematic elements of the
Effects model is that it automatically assumes
‘effects’ and attempts to establish ‘how’
people are effected.
• Gauntlett argues that the first stage of
research (has an individual been affected by
the media?) is ignored and that media effects
research focuses on assumption an effect has
been caused.

9. Do these texts affect
audiences? How?
What could be the
differences?

10. BUCKINGHAM 1996
• ‘Since ancient times, the idea of childhood has
been invested with far-reaching hopes and
anxieties about the future’ David Buckingham
• How many moral panics involve teenagers and
young people?

11. Children
• Children defined by what they lack in
terms of adulthood
• Belief that controlling media means
controlling the ‘wild’ un-institutionalised
nature of children
• Children are able to distinguish between
fictional violence and non-fictional
violence.
• Children categorise and become
desensitised to generic violence
not real violence

12. Moral Panic
• Defined as...
• According to Cohen a “moral panic has
occurred when a condition, episode, person or
group of persons emerges to become defined
as a threat to societal values and interest, its
nature is presented in a stylized and
stereotypical fashion by mass media and the
moral barricades are manned by editors”.

13. W.I THOMAS 1908
‘an article in commerce – a food, a luxury, a
medicine – can always be sold in large
quantities if it be persistently and largely
advertised ‘ in the same way, the news ‘by
advertisement of crime...becomes one of the
forces making for immorality’

14. INDEPENDENT on SUNDAY
‘The modern liberal mind is resistant to cause
and effect... Yet millions of pounds are spent
on advertising and the entire media strains
over presentation, visual effects, camera,
lighting, to put audiences in the right mood.
How can we possibly believe that the shoot-
out never has an effect?’

15. US and THEM

16. • There has always been a fear of the
‘underclass’ and the entertainment associated
with them

17. BRIAN APPLEYARD 1993
‘Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs may well be a
‘brilliant’ film but I would prefer it not to be
seen by the criminal classes or the mentally
unstable or by inadequately supervised
children with little else in their lives’

18. APPLEYARD
‘films such as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, which
to be honest, you would rather were not
watched by certain types of people’

19. THEODORE DALRYMPLE
‘while liberals in Hampstead pooh pooh the
effects of video, from which they are anyway
immune, the effect on minds which are empty
of a moral framework is likely to be
devastating’

20. Essay
‘Game culture is a justifiable panic. Young
people are at risk from such media products’
To what extent do you agree or disagree with
this statement?

21. Plan
• 1) Introduction – outline your opinion in relation
to the statement
• 2) Assumption is that media products have an
effect – this can be questioned and evidence is
not conclusive
• 3) Games industry is largely targeted at youth –
issues with children and moral panics
• 4) Games industry is entertainment of the
masses – issues with entertainment of popular
culture
• 5) Conclusion

22. Source
• Ill Effects – The Media Violence Debate
Collection of articles Edited by Martin Barker
and Julian Petley 2nd
ed. Routledge